VIENNA: Iran has dismissed criticism by the International Atomic Energy Agency of its refusal earlier this year to let one IAEA expert into the country as part of a team investigating allegations of nuclear weapons research.
Tehran said it had a sovereign right to decide who to admit onto its territory. But its failure to issue a visa to an IAEA official, who diplomatic sources said was probably a Western atomic bomb expert, may deepen long-standing Western suspicions that it is stonewalling the UN agency’s inquiry.
The IAEA said last month that Iran had not issued a visa for one member of a team that visited Tehran on August 31 to try to advance the investigation into what the UN agency calls the possible military dimensions of the country’s nuclear programme.
It was the third time the person, whom the UN agency did not identify, had been unable to obtain an entry permit. It was unclear whether this official had received one to join an IAEA delegation holding talks in the Iranian capital this week.
It is important, the IAEA said in a September 5 report on Iran’s nuclear programme, that “any staff member identified by the agency with the requisite expertise is able to participate in the agency’s technical activities”.
But, in a statement distributed to IAEA member states this week, Iran said that granting visas was “our sovereign national right and we will issue it when we deem it appropriate”. The IAEA has for years been trying to get to the bottom of allegations that Iran has worked on designing a nuclear bomb.
Iran says its nuclear activity is a peaceful, but suspicions in the West that the civil nuclear programme is a front for weapons development have led to punishing economic sanctions, which Tehran hopes will be lifted if ongoing negotiations with world powers succeed in ending the standoff.
IAEA member states have the right to deny access to individual inspectors proposed by the UN agency, and Iran has for several years blocked staff from some Western nations, including the United States, to check its nuclear sites.
A separate, high-level IAEA team in charge of the Iran inquiry — which at least on some occasions has included officials from France, the United States and Britain — has held several meetings in Tehran since early 2012, including one this week. Iran said it had provided visas on time to three new members of the IAEA team in recent months.
Western officials say Iran needs to cooperate with the IAEA inquiry if it wants to reach a breakthrough diplomatic settlement with world powers.
Underlining a determination to press ahead with efforts to modernise its nuclear capacity, Iran’s statement said it had installed a new, advanced centrifuge, the IR-8, last year in a research and development wing of its Natanz enrichment plant. Centrifuges refine uranium, a nuclear fuel which can have both civilian and military applications. It said the IR-8 was a “complete new centrifuge” and criticised the IAEA for calling it a “casing” in its reports.
Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated yesterday his country’s “red lines” in negotiations with world powers over its nuclear programme due to resume next week in Vienna.
Khamenei’s intervention came as EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton’s spokesman announced that she and US Secretary of State John Kerry would meet in the Austrian capital with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Ashton will first hold bilateral talks next Tuesday with Zarif, as is customary ahead of each round of nuclear negotiations, and a three-way meeting is to be held the next day, spokesman Michael Mann said.
An infographic published on Khamenei’s official website outlined 11 points to be observed by negotiators before Iran will sign an accord. One of the stipulations includes “the absolute need for Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity to be 190,000 SWU (Separate Work Units)” — close to 20 times its current processing ability. Iranian officials say this is needed to produce fuel for its Bushehr reactor, which is being provided by Russia until 2021.
Reuters/AFP
